


Here

by GhostlyMelody



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Fandom, The Last Jedi
Genre: F/M, TLJ Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-17 02:22:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13067136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostlyMelody/pseuds/GhostlyMelody
Summary: They're not alone.A little oneshot set post-TLJ.





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr version: https://reyloalldayo.tumblr.com/post/168715198791/here

It’s when she’s vulnerable.

It’s when she’s a fragile silhouette, shoulders tossed by sobs, tears balancing her fingertips,  _splitting apart like a chasm_  that he comes.

Aboard the  _Falcon_ , she’s crouched on a dusty piece of cargo in the dank of a hold room, shuttered away from the straggling Resistance, when the bond begins to flare to life–ripping open at the seams–and he peers inside.

She recognizes his aura instantly. Thrumming rage, crackling at the edges with pride–and something…something else. Something broken. Almost sad. Perhaps even…remorseful.

She tenses, her back to him. “What are you doing here?”

“Why are you crying?”

She whips around, a snarl at the ready to match his own–but he only looks on with a mask of gray solemnity. “You shouldn’t be here,” she snaps.

“I’m not.”

And he isn’t. Not really. He’s miles away, a distant star, governing his own hulking ship. Alone. But not really. It’s the bond between them which puts them eye to eye, even across the galaxy.

“Leave me be.” She turns back around, elbows digging into her knees.

“You know I can’t do that.” It’s nearly a whisper. “You know I don’t want to.” An echoing footstep. His presence leaks closer–like spilled blood. “And you don’t want me to leave.”

_Liar_ , she almost spits, but the thought is merely that: a thought. It’s something she’d never say aloud because it’s something she could never defend.

His words are sharpened to a fine, painful edge: “You’re thinking about your parents. You’re still clinging to the past. You’re still holding on.”

“So what if I am?” She doesn’t turn round. 

“They abandoned you.” Like a solar flare, a whisper of his aura reaches across the darkness between them in a flash of courage.

“At least I want to remember who I truly am.”

He flinches. The bond flickers. Retreats like a beaten, frightened thing. For a fraction of a second, a feral fear seeps into the cracks of their brokenness.  _Come back._ She furrows her brows, mind thrumming, and he’s there again, like flesh and blood.

Human.

“Ben,” she murmurs. “I’m here.”

For a moment, all is silent. For a moment,  a dread courses along her brain–he’s gone, left her for his own cold cell of a ship. The air about her grows numb.

Then…his hand.

His ungloved hand on her shoulder. Her name–an echo of sadness. And then his voice: “I’m here, too.”

When she turns, he’s truly gone.


	2. Part II

She seeks him out.

It's enough to bring him to his knees.

Like a felled tree, he crashes with a sob to the cold metal floor of the ship.

She's there to catch him, her own aura a flickering band of sweet light he can almost taste. But there's the slightest undercurrent there, too...a deep, dark shadow, bitter as ash. It throbs like a pulse beneath her own heartbeat.

She remains with him on that floor, unwound threads tangling together. His slack, weary body seems almost...naked, yet a thick, impermeable layer of black cloth separates him from the numb chill of the room--and the warmth of her.

"She's gone," he sobs into Rey's shoulder. "My mother...she's--"

Rey presses a hand to his cheek, and through the bond, her skin is as tangible as the truth they weather: his mother is gone. _  
_

_Gone, gone, gone..._

The plea barely breaks through his tear-choked throat: "Please...don't leave me, too."

She struggles over a sob, but her words soften the metallic tears streaking his skin: "I'm here, Ben. I'm here."

_Here_.

They wade in their grief, trembling and tenuous and together--if only for a moment.

"I knew," he says, voice a tiny, bleak echo. "I just knew she was gone. I felt it."

When she speaks, it's a broken hum against his chest. "I did, too."

If it were another time, he would ask her ghost to stay. But there's a chasm of war separating them, and enemies as they are, a battlefield waiting, too--one far more treacherous than the one they always straddle.

But he's a cruel, weeping monster, and a selfish one at that. So he won't let her go. Not yet.

And she stays _\-- _here--__ till the war pulls them apart again.


End file.
